Town Green Library remains on path to completion

The Town Green library, a joint effort between the town of Longboat Key and Sarasota County, is moving right along.

With fundraising goals met and exceeded, Sarasota County Director of Libraries Renee Di Pilato gave an update to county and town commissioners Friday on where the project stands.

The library to be built on the Town Green is a collaborative effort between the town and county. The town donated the land where the library will be built and the county will design the library with town input. Di Pilato said they picked Orlando's Borelli + Partners as the architecture firm and Jon F. Swift, Inc. will be the construction manager.

Longboat Key spearheaded fundraising and exceeded its $3.5 million goal.

“As we secured donations for enhanced spaces for the library and that includes a larger meeting room space, a really lovely exterior space, we had to go back to our architects and our construction firm to amend their contracts,” Di Pilato said. “That is something that we are almost completed with at this point.”

The expectation, Di Pilato said, is for the design to be finalized late in the summer of 2026 and groundbreaking is estimated in early 2027.

St. Armands Key looks nice, but is a shell of its former self upon closer inspection, said St. Armands Circle Association Board Member Andrew Vac. It’s also vulnerable to future flooding impacts.

“All those pipes and the drainage we have is over 50 years old. It needs to be replaced,” Vac said. “We have got 144 possible businesses on St. Armands Circle. Only 101 are open now.”

Vac, St. Armands Resident Association President Chris Goglia and Lido Key Residents Association President Carl Shoffstall all showed up to a joint meeting between the Sarasota County Commissioners and town of Longboat Key on Friday to state the need for funding to protect the shopping and dining mecca just across the bridge from downtown Sarasota.

“I’m guessing that when many of you came here today, you drove through St. Armands, and it might have looked good. The city has put a lot of money into flowers and palm trees and mulch and there’s an art festival,” Goglia said. “But if you look more closely, you would have seen that there are still many empty storefronts, and on the residential streets there are a lot of cleared lots and abandoned houses.”

At the joint meeting, Longboat Key Assistant Town Manager Isaac Brownman said the town of Longboat Key “wants to extend our support for the request by the city to improve access and drainage through St. Armands Circle.” The flooding St. Armands experienced made evacuating and getting back onto Longboat Key more complicated and arduous during the 2024 hurricanes.

“We had a very difficult time accessing the island at all,” Brownman said. “Gulf of Mexico Drive is the only access on and off the island.”

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Renee Di Pilato.